thanks for not being a zombie

On 11 November I was standing in a check-in queue at Heathrow's Terminal Three, on my way to Canada, when an announcement was broadcast, requesting 'cooperation' in the observation of a 2-minute silence. Few scenes in modern life are more redolent of a mechanical toy in action than a major airport during peak hours. The sensation of highly controlled, perpetual and repetitious movement is overwhelming. An atmosphere of fairytale entrancement suppresses the underlying panic that afflicts all sensible travellers (one reason I life artist Mariko Mori's projected work, Miko No Inori, or Shaman Girl's Prayer, with its plaintive incantation performed by Mori as plastic spiritual cyberbabe in the ultradesign of Osaka's Kansei airport). For those processing through this environment, a silence to honour the dead is reluctantly conceded (death may be imminent, after all), easily observed by those like me who still wait in a queue but almost impossible for the airline staff and travellers who have reached their moment of ecstatic confrontation at a desk. Almost imperceptibly, hush oozed downwards through Heathrow, a gentle slide that softened the outlines of jagged chatter, audio alerts, luggage belts and disembodied unwanted information speak. The mechanical toy took perhaps 128 second to crawl to a complete stop, then another 2 second to relocate its life force. (43-44).

Recent air travel entries by KF and Chuck resonate, for me, with this passage from Toop's book.

Posted by at 7:57 PM | Permalink

Murray Schafer, from "Open Ears" (in 2003's The Auditory Culture Reader):

The Latin word audire (to hear) has many derivations. One may have an 'audience' with the king--that is, a chance to have him hear your petitions. One's financial affairs are 'audited' by an accountant, because originally accounts were read aloud for clarity. An accused person is given a 'hearing,' that is, a chance for the accused and witnesses to offer aural testimony in the courtroom. Of course, rooms are often constructed or appointed to favour the transmission of some voices over others, and the courtroom, like the royal court, is no exception, with the judge as the king occupying the most elevated position, reminding us that the Latin word obaudire meant 'hearing from below'--obeying. Similar relationships have been noticed in other languages, for instance in German, where horen (to hear) is also the root of gehoren (to belong to) and gehorchen (to obey). We hear sound. We belong to sound. We obey sound. (30).

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Roger Chartier, from "Representations of the Written Word" (in 1995's Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer):

The revolution of the electronic text will also be a revolution in reading. To read on a screen is not to read in a codex. The electronic representation of texts completely changes the text's status; for the materiality of the book, it substitutes the immateriality of texts without a unique location; against the relations of contiguity established in the print objects, it opposes the free composition of infinitely manipulable fragments; in place of the immediate apprehension of the whole work, made visible by the object that embodies it, it introduces a lengthy navigation in textual archipelagos that have neither shores nor borders. Such changes inevitably, imperatively require new ways of reading, new relationships to the written word, new intellectual techniques. While earlier revolutions in reading took place without changing the fundamental structure of the book, such will not be the case in our own world. The revolution that has begun is, above all, a revolution in the media and forms that transmit the written word. In this sense, the present revolution has only one precedent in the West: the substitution of the codex for the volumen--of the book composed of quires for the book in the form of a roll--during the first centuries of the Christian era. (18).

Posted by at 9:52 AM | Permalink

I very much like the "author's note" at the beginning of my latest pleasure reading book, Azar Nafisi's memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran:

Aspects of characters and events in this story have been changed mainly to protect individuals, not just from the eye of the censor but also from those who read such narratives to discover who's who and who did what to whom, thriving on and filling their own emptiness through others' secrets. The facts in this story are true insofar as any memory is ever truthful, but I have made every effort to protect friends and students, baptizing them with new names, and disguising them perhaps even from themselves, changing and interchanging facets of their lives so that their secrets are safe.

Posted by at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the Book of Common Prayer (1770):

The Order how the Psalter is appointed to be read.

The Psalter shall be read through once every Month, as it is there appointed, both for Morning and Evening Prayer. But in February it shall be read only to the Twenty-eighth, or Twenty-ninth day of the Month

And whereas January, March, May, July, August, October and December, have One-and-thirty days apiece; it is ordered, that the same Psalms shall be read the last day of the said Months, which were read the day before: So that the Psalter may begin again the first day of the next month ensuing.

And whereas the 119 Psalm is divided into 22 Portions, and is overlong to be read at one time; it is so ordered, that at one time shall not be read above four or five of the said Portions.

And at the end of every Psalm, and of every such part of the 119 Psalm, shall be repeated this Hymn,

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen

Note, That the Psalter followeth the Division of the Hebrews, and the Translation of the great English Bible, set forth and used in the time of King Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

Posted by at 3:13 PM | Permalink

From my research notes, a prayer written by Thomas Aquinas, and copied down by hand in one of the personal documents I read:

Ineffably wise and good Creator, illustrious origin, true formation of light and wisdom, vouchsafe to infuse into my understanding, some ray of thy brightness, thereby removing that two-fold darkness, under which I was born of sin and ignorance ... Thou that makest the tongues of infants eloquent, instruct, I pray thee, my tongue likewise: and pour upon my lips the grace of thy benediction. Give me quickness to comprehend; and memory to retain: Give me a happiness in expounding; a facility in learning; and a copious eloquence in speaking. prepare my entrance into knowledge, direct me in my journey, and render the event of it complete...

Posted by at 8:35 PM | Permalink

Jackie Ashley, "Speak up, speak out" (Guardian):

If Britain is supposed to be engaged in a struggle to defend British values, then we should recall what the most important ones actually are. They are not stoicism, good humour, even courage; but genuine democratic liveliness and a commitment to free speech. Without dissent, freely expressed, and the vigorous testing of arguments, the Commons has no purpose, other than formal rubber-stamp for the executive. And if ever we needed that testing, we need it now...

Newspapers need to stop having hypocritical hissy-fits every time an MP says something outside the consensus. MPs then need to stop being so timid. We don't elect them to be vicars or social workers...

Mutual respect for genuinely held differences--that's essential. But this is the very worst time for smothering political debate.

Posted by at 3:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life"
     --Samuel Johnson

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Dane, Joseph A. The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Thanks to Ian for the recommendation. A lengthy blockquote is below the fold.

Continue reading "the myth of print culture" »

Posted by at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Jardine, Lisa and Anthony Grafton. "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy." Past and Present: 129 (Nov. 1990): 30-78. Available through JSTOR (subscription required):

This essay forms part of a larger, book-length project, which is intended to contribute to the historical understanding of the ways in which humanistically trained readers assimilated and responded to the classical heritage. But it seeks to go beyond the traditional, textual definition of this field to reconstruct the social, professional and personal contexts in which reading took place. Although the present study deals with a topic historians tend to label as "high culture," it will be clear that we also intend it to be in dialogue with a body of recent publications on the history of reading and of the book. That work, although by no means homogeneous, broadly concerns itself with the production and circulation of printed texts, and with setting the activity of reading in its historical and cultural contexts, as well as with some of the social implications that result from a particular locating of reading in history.

Many thanks to Ian for the recommendation.

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D. F. McKenzie. "Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices." Studies in Bibliography 22 (1969).

...if I were to give this paper an epigraph, it might well be that quoted by Sir Karl Popper from Black's Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry published in 1803: 'A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree with the phenomena. This will please the imagination, but does not advance our knowledge.' Our ignorance about printing-house conditions in the 17th and 18th centuries has left us disastrously free to devise them according to need; and we have at times compounded our errors by giving a spurious air of 'scientific' definitiveness to our conclusions.

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By Andy Borowitz in the May 16, 2005 issue of the New Yorker:

Get a bunch of your friends together, ring O.J. Simpson's doorbell, and tell him that you are "the real killers" and that you are surrendering to him so that he can finally stop searching for you. Get his reaction on videotape and sell it over the Internet.

Convince the leaders of the world's only superpower that a Middle Eastern nation is loaded to the gills with weapons of mass destruction. Tell them that some broken-down old vans there are "mobile weapons labs," and persuade them to spend billions of dollars on an invasion and an occupation. After they scour the country for the weapons and come up empty, shrug your shoulders sympathetically and take over the oil ministry.

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Loewenstein, Joseph. "The Script in the Marketplace." Representations 12 (Autumn 1985): 101-114. (Subscription required.)

The list of Ben Jonson's permanent contributions to English literary convention...has regularly included that major contribution to the development of literary marketing, the publication of the folio Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The volume appeared in 1616, well before it could be decently represented as posthumous. This publication has frequently been remarked on, but such remark has almost inevitably subsided into reflections on Jonson's vanity; in these more sympathetic times, we incline to speak of the charm of his vanity. I should like to treat the event a bit more technically and insist that critical responses to Jonson's authorial vanity are in fact quite telling; that we make such remarks is offhanded testimony to the permanent effects of this particular publication, indirect evidence that the 1616 Workes marks a major event in the history of what one might call the bibliographic ego. (101)

Thanks to Laurie for the reference.

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I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may be kept from this Nation.

I wish I could keep war from all Nations; but that is beyond my power. I can at least make certain that no act of the United States helps to produce or to promote war. I can at least make clear that the conscience of America revolts against war and that any Nation which provokes war forfeits the sympathy of the people of the United States.

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

My maternal grandfather served in the U.S. Navy. My paternal grandfather served in the U.S. Army and fought in World War II. My father and uncle both served in Vietnam at the height of hostilities, and both were wounded, my uncle severely. Unlike the wealthy men who currently send our troops into harm's way, but who chose the safest route when their turn came to serve, my family knows the pain and ugliness of war.

From 1979 to 1989, my father worked as an advisor to NATO, keeping the peace in the last years of the cold war. Jingoism and masculine posturing leave me cold. Tanks and guns are the tools of those too dense or too arrogant to find a way to resolve conflict without violence. The most dangerous bullies in the world wear suits, not uniforms. Soldiers and sailors don't make foreign policy: they follow orders. Today I remember not only those who have died, but also the men and women who have passed and who continue to pass unnumbered hours thinking and planning how war may be avoided so that fewer young men and women need to die.

Posted by at 8:45 AM | Permalink

If you don't know anything about the field of textual criticism, the Tanselle essay linked below is not a bad place to start. It's accessible (in that no subscription is required to read this particular journal), and it's also accessible (in that no great degree of specialized knowledge is needed to understand it).

Tanselle, G. Thomas. "Textual Criticism at the Millennium." Studies in Bibliography 54 (2001): 2-81.

During the last part of the twentieth century...a focus on texts as social products came to characterize the bulk of the discussion of textual theory, if not editions themselves. For the first time, the majority of writings on textual matters expressed a lack of interest in, and often active disapproval of, approaching texts as the products of individual creators; and it promoted instead the forms of texts that emerged from the social process leading to public distribution, forms that were therefore accessible to readers.

This dramatic shift has produced some benefits, but it has not been an unmixed blessing. Both the turn away from the author and the emphasis on textual instability reflect trends in literary and cultural criticism and thus are evidence of the growing interconnections between fields that for too long had little influence on each other....These welcome developments, however, came at a price. One is that the prose of many textual critics has been infiltrated with the fashionable buzz-words of literary theory and with a style of writing that often substitutes complexity of expression for careful thought. Another is the notion that recognizing the importance of socially produced texts involves rejecting the study of authorial intentions...Still another problem is that the emphasis on documentary texts has led to a considerable amount of unfounded criticism of the activity of critical editing and the "mediation" practiced by scholarly editors...

Three of the recurring themes during [the second half of the 1990s] were

• the application of textual criticism to nonverbal works,
• the editorial traditions of non-English-speaking countries,
• and the role of the computer in editing.

I shall take up each of these before turning to some of the more general studies of textual issues...

Posted by at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Jill writes

Most people remain ensconced in their own little clusters of people who are more or less like them and who basically have almost all the same information as each other. That’s why bridges to other social clusters are vital: if you find people who connect to people who are different from yourself and your buddies, you’re going to get a whole lot of new information and new ideas. That’s important.

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James McLaverty [link]
"The Mode of Existence of Literary Works of Art: The Case of the Dunciad Variorum" [link]
Studies in Bibliography [link], Volume 37 (1984)

In a section of his Essays in Critical Dissent entitled "The Philistinism of 'Research,'" the late F. W. Bateson laid down a challenge to bibliographers which, so far as I know, has never been taken up directly. The question he poses is roughly this: if the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, where are Hamlet and Lycidas? what is the essential physical basis of a literary work of art? Bateson's answer...is that the physical basis is "human articulations"; "the literary original exists physically in a substratum of articulated sound." A book, he claims, has the same sort of imperfect relationship to the original work as a photograph has to the man photographed... It follows from this, Bateson argues, that the bibliographer is guilty of mistaking the secondary for the primary: he busies himself preserving the author's "accidentals," when the author's responsibility stops with the sounds; the bibliographer confuses the function of the author with that of his copyist.

To much of this the bibliographer will have a ready answer, but the importance of these criticisms lies in their level of generality; they call for a justification of certain bibliographical attitudes in terms of aesthetic theory and they raise, in vivid if eccentric fashion, several of the crucial issues in aesthetics today. Without presuming to speak for bibliography, I want to challenge Bateson's conclusions on these issues and to suggest that the physical appearance of books sometimes has even greater importance than textual bibliographers are willing to allow it. I believe that leading writers on aesthetics -- writers quite independent and even ignorant of the world of bibliography -- are able to give solutions to Bateson's problems which, far from diminishing the role of the written or printed word, emphasise the importance of notation.

McLaverty is the author of Pope, Print, and Meaning (Oxford UP, 2001).

Posted by at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)